The Lady Garden: What are you so afraid of?

The Lady
Garden returns in a winter special for your
desexualised-objectified-viewing pleasure.

The Lady
Garden is a performance installation of live naked women
that challenges HOW you look at bodies, primarily the bodies
of women.

What are you so afraid of? What is it about the
naked form that is so discomforting and frightening? The
nude/naked/unclothed form is here to strip back all
signifiers to confront you with the potential for
desexualising women.

Being looked at is a powerful act,
and sixteen women will present their bodies as various kinds
of objects - a flower to be watered, a lampshade to be
turned on or off, a writing desk, a food platter, and more
– to ask you to acknowledge that we are shown sexually
objectified women everyday and to see if you can readdress
and renegotiate that lens.

An important feature of The
Lady Garden, is intersectionality; that a wide range of
women are asked to participate. Being able to ask “where
are all the women of colour/older women/women of
size/transwomen?” is part of the dialogue this work
creates.

In the wake of the Roastbusters scandal and the
reaction to Labour’s so-called ‘man-ban’, misogyny,
rape culture and the policing of women’s bodies clearly
still exists in New Zealand, and this work challenges how we
look, judge and consume women’s bodies.

The Lady
Garden was last performed in Auckland in August 2013 as
part of The Porn Project, a fringe art campaign to get
people talking frankly about porn in a sex-positive,
misogyny- and racism-negative way.

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